we could be heroes
by LadyMoriel
Summary: Loki's found himself in a very strange, confusing world this time, but it's...not awful. Scenes from an MMO. Yes, I'm writing Marvel Heroes fic (about Loki, because everything is about Loki), but absolutely no familiarity with the game itself is necessary to understand this fic. If you like MCU Loki and you have passing knowledge of other major Marvel characters, you're good.
1. Choose your character

_Marvel has a free MMO where you can play as a whole bunch of different Marvel characters, and it's more or less a Marvel-skinned Diablo clone (so I've heard; I've never played Diablo because I have no interest in dungeon crawlers, or really anything that isn't heavy on story) with a typically thin MMO plot, and honestly it's not even that good aside from the fact that it's the sort of game I get bored with very quickly...and yet I'm addicted for the simple reason that I get to play as Loki. MCU Loki, more or less, because his default costume is his armor from Thor: The Dark World (interesting side note: I think he's the only character so far whose default appearance is from the MCU rather than comics), and also a good guy, more or less, because the only available storyline is about helping traditional good guys defeat traditional bad guys. As you might imagine, I am_ all over _that._

 _And then I found myself wanting to elaborate on a few in-game interactions and events, and eventually that turned into "what the hell, I will write actual Marvel Heroes fic because I do what I want". This will most likely end up being a plotless, randomly updated fic with short new chapters whenever I feel like it, in part because I doubt it has an audience of more than like 3 people._

* * *

It is an exceedingly strange world in which Loki has found himself this time—he might almost call it unsettling, if he were of a mind to risk the minor vulnerability inherent in admitting it even to himself, which he is not. "Strange," at least, is inarguable, and in most cases a vast understatement.

He is not sure, for instance, how long he has been here (perhaps a very long time, perhaps almost no time at all), or which of his memories are real, are _his_. Sometimes he is sure that he is the Loki who believed himself Aesir, the Loki who fell, the Loki who tumbled through an endless void, who did not know whether to laugh or weep when he was plucked from the dark and then learned what it was to truly know pain, who was sent to Midgard after the tesseract with a scepter and a threat and a memory of agony. Sometimes he is the Loki who tried to fail and thereby defy his master, as much as even the thought terrified him; and who had to conceal his relief (not so difficult, tangled as it was with bitterness and hurt and _grief_ ) when Thor was sent to stop him. Sometimes he is the Loki who tried furiously to win, who took grim delight in the destruction he wreaked on primitive Midgard, who despised Thor and Odin for their hypocrisy, who knew beyond a doubt that he could never have what he had always wanted and so he would have this or die trying; who, in his rage, knew but could not care that Thanos would let him rule Midgard only as a puppet; who knew that the best he could hope for was annihilation and so he swore by his blood and despair and tattered magic that he would drag all Yggdrasil down with him. Sometimes he is the Loki who rotted in an Asgardian prison, mind turning on itself, before he finally contrived to escape (and even that is complicated and confused, weighted down by a terrible grief that he only sometimes thinks he understands).

(Sometimes, more faintly, he is a Loki who was never imprisoned at all, who told Thor as much of the truth as he could and more to the Allfather when the chains on his mind were broken, who tentatively rejoined his family and threw himself into preparing the Realms to fight the Titan. Sometimes, in his weaker moments, he only wishes he were that Loki, and then he thinks in disgust that he deserves nothing of the kind.)

Sometimes he is the Loki who burned, the Loki who hated everything Asgard stood for and wanted either to rule it or destroy it, the Loki who stole a shieldmaiden's body for his own purposes, the Loki who brought about the end of all things once again and bartered damned souls for a way to escape death forever. Sometimes he is the Loki who became a child again, devious and fiercely intelligent and _good_ , who loved his (suddenly much older) brother, who sacrificed that brother to save everything else, who alone knew enough to recognize an imposter, who loved a girl from Hel and undid his mistake by setting her free, who had a dog and liked milkshakes and discovered Tumblr, who schemed and laughed and wept and bore the weight of decisions too heavy for any child and tried his hardest, who lost in the end but won by dying as himself. Sometimes he is the Loki who took over the shell of his innocent self but could not escape his guilt and his new/old conscience, who worked to change, who did and did not lay waste to Midgard out of spite, who did and did not seek to destroy his younger self, who understood what it truly was to be Loki and in so doing discovered how to rewrite his own story.

Sometimes he is yet another Loki, horned like an unsubtle demon or robed and genderless, who convinced the Allfather to turn Thor into a woman for reasons that now escape him, who alone in Asgard had the strength of will to choose against the pressure of stories and expectation and supposed fate, who helped save all Midgard from destruction. Sometimes he is old and worn, the Loki who won and ruled Asgard and found in it no satisfaction, who did not realize until too late that he could not triumph by killing Thor. Sometimes, confusingly, he is very young and attending a Midgardian academy with Thor and many of his equally young superhero friends, or battling to rule Midgard and Asgard in a bizarre world made entirely of blocks, or spinning schemes that involve ice cream and pigeons. Sometimes he is a Loki who carried the hammer, if briefly, and was Odin's favored son from the beginning. Sometimes he is a Loki standing on a Midgardian stage and basking in adulation as thousands of mortals shout his name.

Sometimes, he thinks he is all of these selves and none of them, and it eats at him.

The people with whom he shares this world are no less strange. He is surrounded by beings he simultaneously does and does not know, in guises that both are and are not familiar. He sees others with his own face, even, others who are and are not him, just as nearly every Thor he meets both is and is not his brother. They are all copies, or they are all real, and he is not sure which possibility is more dizzying—especially when they all seem to exist across the same ever-shifting spectrum of selves as he does.

(Sometimes he thinks that only the obnoxious Deadpool truly understands this place and its inner workings. This is a thought he will never, ever speak aloud.)

The answers become no clearer to him as the days go by. Instead, as he learns the secrets of Avengers Tower and the nooks and alleyways of New York, as he works with humans like Maria Hill and Phil Coulson and Hank Pym and Ben Ulrich, as he visits slums and skyscrapers and sewers and jungles, as he becomes used to exchanging barbs with an ever-shifting roster of heroes…the questions somehow seem to lose their importance. He is a being of countless interwoven myths and stories, the precise intersection of which seems to shift every time he tries to examine it, and eventually he stops trying, because he is no longer sure that it is relevant to what he is doing here. One thing, in all this, is constant: always, he is Loki, and he knows more than almost anyone that identity is malleable, that facts and truth are not always perfectly interchangeable.

And the truth is this: he is all of these things and more, and no one has forgotten, and he is not at all sure that he believes in redemption, and yet…he assists SHIELD, and travels Midgard, and rescues commoners who recognize him and call him "hero" anyway as they thank him for his aid, and he becomes gradually aware that here in this strange place of intertwining realities, he is building something new. It is tentative, fragile, and he tries not to think of it because surely that is tempting fate, to name a thing and still think he can keep it—but it remains anyway, growing and strengthening ever so subtly when he is not paying attention.

He is chaos and change, after all, and in each of these is the possibility for new beginnings, even if he could not see it until now and here. He is Loki, with everything that means. And for the first time, he begins to think—truly, not in empty bravado and arrogance—that it could be enough. Not yet, perhaps. Not today. But someday. And that, in itself, is enough for now.

* * *

 _I really have no excuse for this. I was just going to do a little introductory chapter to set the stage or whatever and establish, you know, here's this MMO that's a weird mashup of various comics and movie canons, here's how Loki fits into that, now off we go, and instead I WENT AND GAVE MYSELF FEELINGS. Not just Loki feelings generally. That's pretty much my baseline state and the whole reason I'm playing this game, because I have a ridiculous amount of feelings about MCU Loki and a couple of his comics counterparts. No: in writing this, I gave myself feelings about_ this specific Loki _from_ this specific MMO _, despite its thin plot and thinner characterization. I have problems. (In fairness, I did already know I had a thing about identity and semi-metaphysical stuff with alternate universes, so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.)_

 _I reference a whole bunch of Marvel universes here-the MCU generally plus different interpretations and potential AUs, the mainstream comics universe (the Lady Loki era, Siege, Journey Into Mystery, Agent of Asgard, one mention of classic weird Loki), Earth X, the 2004 Loki miniseries by Rodi and Ribic, Avengers Academy (the new mobile game), Lego Marvel Super Heroes, one episode of the Avengers Assemble cartoon, and Tom Hiddleston's 2013 SDCC appearance. Because I can, that's why._


	2. Connection error

Something is _wrong_. Loki can feel it the moment he sets foot in this crumbling Manhattan neighborhood. The ground seems to sway beneath him and he grabs for the nearest wall, trying not to stagger. It is—the air feels heavy in his lungs, his body slow to obey him, and when he reaches for magic it slithers out of his grasp.

He should not even _be_ here, Loki thinks (dizzily, slowly, because even thinking is a struggle), he is certain the jet was meant to leave him at a rooftop safe zone instead of down here on the street, but there is a door only a few paces away and he knows he can recover there, out of sight from all the thugs he is meant to battle. He will figure out what is happening and it will be _fine_.

He takes a step and stumbles, badly, rough brick scraping his hand as he lurches into the wall. For a moment he just clings to it, furious and disgusted (not afraid, never afraid) that merely remaining upright is such a struggle. He plants his staff on the pavement and manages another step.

And then, of course, a nearby group of thugs takes notice of him.

There's a bit of pointless shouting, first, fuzzy and indistinct to his ears but unimportant regardless, and then the voices are drowned out by a hail of gunfire. For a moment, instinctively, Loki is not concerned. The mortals' primitive projectile weapons, at worst, have only inconvenienced him before. And indeed, the first jolts of impact are only that, the bullets failing to penetrate his armor. But there are many thugs with many guns, and he cannot move to destroy them or even defend himself, and his armor is not good enough to protect him from more than one or two volleys.

The first shock of pain hits like a punch to the gut. He jerks in surprise, even that small movement delayed and slow, and tries again to draw on his magic, to swing up his staff, and again nothing will obey him. More bullets strike, scattered stinging pains that would only be a nuisance singly but he _cannot react_ , only staggers back from the force of dozens of gunshots at once, the world going gray as his strength bleeds out. His legs buckle, and he ends up on one knee, one hand still holding his staff in a deathgrip, the other pressed flat to the grimy pavement. He struggles to rise and fails.

Loki suspects that, if pressed, he could think of more embarrassing ways to die, but at the moment nothing is coming to mind.

Except he doesn't die: the thugs, apparently (and, it must be said, correctly) considering him incapacitated, lose interest almost immediately and depart for more lively opponents. Loki is left in the street to gasp ineffectively for breath and stew in his humiliating defeat.

He can call SHIELD for an extraction, he supposes, now that he has a moment. They can retrieve him like some wayward child, and give him medical assistance he should not need, and he can attempt to ignore the inevitable smirks, and he wants _very much_ not to do any of that.

Even as he thinks it, he realizes he is already too late: he can hear approaching footsteps, either a thug returning to finish him off or some hero eager to mock him. It hardly matters which, as far as his reaction is concerned, because all he can do to brace himself is to curl his fingers a little more tightly around his scepter.

But there's no blow, no laughter, just a young woman's voice saying "Hey, are you okay?" and the accompanying sound of…skittering, like tiny claws on the pavement. A small, furry creature with a bushy tail scampers into his field of vision and stops next to his hand, staring up at him. Loki stares back, then looks past it to see several more of the little animals, all clustered around a pair of human feet in furry boots. He has another moment of blank incomprehension before the pieces come together, far more slowly than they should: of course, this must be Squirrel Girl, also known as…at the moment he cannot seem to remember her other name. With a great effort, he manages to raise his head enough to see more than her feet, and yes, she has a tail too.

He looks up further, and her face swims into view—open, friendly, concerned. (The little creatures around her, he realizes after a moment, are all wearing more or less the same expression. It is either eerie or hilarious, and in his current state he is entirely unable to decide which.) From sheer force of habit if nothing else, it is on the tip of his tongue to ask if she has come to gloat, so it is probably just as well that he lacks the breath to speak.

"Let's get you back on your feet," Squirrel Girl says, and produces a standard SHIELD medkit, with which she does…something, crouching next to him where he cannot easily see her. He can't really tell what she does with the medkit, but after a moment his breathing eases and strength begins to flow back into his limbs.

She offers him a hand up, which he pretends not to notice, instead using his scepter to brace himself as he carefully stands up. He's considerably taller than she is, like this, but rather than seeming intimidated (and she probably wouldn't be, if half the stories he's heard are true), she asks sympathetically, "New here, huh?"

Loki brushes at his coat. "I hardly see how that's relevant. I am fully capable of defeating a handful of mortals with _guns_. There was—something in the air, perhaps…"

"Server lag!" Deadpool hollers as he runs past. "It's the one boss fight nobody can win!"

Squirrel Girl stares after him, eyebrows drawn together (her squirrels, lacking human eyebrows, somehow bear expressions of equal consternation). "Right," she says after a moment. "Well, take care of yourself, okay?" She smiles brightly at him and hurries off.

"…thank you," Loki says, when he thinks she is out of earshot.

One of the squirrels turns and waves at him.

* * *

 _What really happened: it wasn't server lag, and it wasn't even my ISP being garbage like I originally thought; it was actually my dying wireless card crapping the bed, first putting me in the wrong part of the level where I got shot and couldn't react, and then disconnecting completely when I tried to accept Squirrel Girl's revive. But, you know, it makes a slightly more interesting story this way._


End file.
